MUMBAI: A day after anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar was shot dead, the Maharashtra government on Wednesday decided to promulgate an ordinance to enact a long-pending bill to eradicate black magic, blind faith and superstitious beliefs. The law will be the first such in the country.

The new measure will empower the government to bring under its ambit social and religious evils, human or animal sacrifices, rituals to drive out evil spirits or ensure a male progeny, perpetrated by self-styled godmen, witchcraft and wizardry practitioners, often cheating the gullible public.

MUMBAI: A day after anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar was shot dead, the Maharashtra government on Wednesday decided to promulgate an ordinance to enact a long-pending bill to eradicate black magic, blind faith and superstitious beliefs. The law will be the first such in the country.

I'd really like to know how that works - a law that will prevent people from believing nonsense. All it's going to do is make people contemptuous of the law. (Which seems to be quite common in India already.)

As soon as the law can prove what people believe. See, that's the problem. A law prohibiting DOING something has a chance of being enforced. A law prohibiting BELIEVING IN something is pure nonsense until someone invents a telepathy machine.

And making a law that can't actually be enforced (they can't prove that someone violated a law that prohibits belief) is just asking people to hold all laws in contempt, because the people who write such laws are idiots. (Or maybe the people they're making the laws for are even more idiotic, so they won't notice how stupid the law is. I haven't polled them, so I can't know.)

We've (Europe) had laws like that before. The result being things like the Spanish Inquisition and the repression of Catholics in Britain which led to them being driven underground. Also various laws against Witchcraft, Heresy, Blasphemy and Apostasy (Thought Crime however you cut it). I hope the Indians will show a little more wisdom in the enforcement of this law.Given that the assassination took place in Bombay, Muslim extremists would seem a likely group of suspects (they bomb the trains there every so often) though Shiv Sena is also active.

Muslims or Shiv Sena are not the suspects in this case. The law would, in a way, be a deterrence, because now the police will be interested in bribes from people involved. So only the people who can pay bribes would be able to engage in it. :)